Abstract

A number of metallic compounds such as FeRh, Mn3GaC, and FeCl2 exhibit the interesting property of metamagnetism, i.e. the presence of order-order magnetic-phase transitions. The microscopic Hamiltonian that is commonly used to describe this class of system is of Heisenberg type with competing exchange interactions between the nearest- and next-nearest neighbours. Starting from this quantum Hamiltonian, through several transformations, it is possible to obtain an effective second-quantized Hamiltonian which has a two-body interaction term. A recent method of analyzing such Hamiltonians is then applied based on exact calculations for the corresponding nonlinear equation of motion. This is followed by quantization about the classical solutions. Stability conditions imposed on the classical solutions agree with earlier results.